This invention relates to a tool for burying a hose in the ground automatically as a trench is dug for the hose. The invention could also be used for burying other elongate, flexible structures such as a cable or wire.
Flexible hoses are buried in the ground for many reasons: to provide automatic lawn sprinkling systems, to provide a pipeline for moving product, and to keep the hose from being damaged.
In the past, burying a hose in the ground required two steps. First, a trench was excavated, generally manually with a shovel or pickaxe. The hose was then laid in the trench. Finally, the trench was filled in with dirt removed during the excavation. This process is very manually intensive and takes a lot of time to complete. Laborers may also be subject to injury due to the manual effort involved with excavating the trench and burying the hose.
There is a need for a tool that can be attached to the loader arm of a front-end loader, such as a bobcat, that will excavate the trench and automatically lay the hose in the trench as the trench is excavated.